https://www.missionislam.com/knowledge/books/100FabricatedHadith.pdf
https://destinationksa.com/fabricated-hadiths-you-should-think-twice-before-forwarding/
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Narcissistic parents will never understand the breadth of their impact on kids.
KEY POINTS
- Children of narcissists are treated as if they exist simply to provide a reflection for the parent, and to serve the parent.
- It often takes children of narcissists many years of frustration and anguish to figure out that Mom or Dad "isn’t quite right."
- Adult children of narcissists tend to be in romantic relationships where they have to suppress themselves in order to please their partners.
The topic of narcissism begs the following question flashing in neon lights: Why would a narcissist want a child to begin with? Aren’t they so focused on themselves that they wouldn’t have the slightest interest in paying attention to others, much less attending to a needy young child who craves constant attention and praise?
Alas, the question presumes a type of normalcy and natural order of the parent-child relationship that betrays the root of narcissism. The truth is, narcissistic parents don’t have children because they want to nurture and guide their offspring through life; they have children so that they have an automatic, built-in relationship in which they have power, one in which the narcissist can write the rules without any checks and balances.
Understand this: Control over someone else is the ultimate jackpot every narcissist works so hard to win. The reality of narcissistic parenting couldn’t be sadder: The child of the narcissist realizes early on that he exists to provide a reflection for the parent and to serve the parent – not the other way around.
If you comb through online relationship forums and chat rooms devoted to the subject of adult children of narcissists, you'll find that all of the posters of comments have suffered similar bruises at the hands of a narcissistic parent. To read some of the comments is heartbreaking, and they call into question how strange and illogical it is to create such rigorous adoption laws when an ill-fit individual can procreate whenever they want – and mess up the life of a child without suffering a consequence.
The real tragedy occurs behind closed doors at home, much like the process of physical abuse. The problem with being a child of a narcissist is that it takes these children so many years of frustration and anguish to figure out that Mom or Dad isn’t quite right; until that point, these children are merely dancing as fast as they can, trying to please the impossible-to-please narcissistic parent. It takes years to finally see that the type of parenting they’ve been receiving is wrong – if not emotionally abusive.
Young children of narcissists learn early in life that everything they do is a reflection on the parent to the point that the child must fit into the personality and behavioral mold intended for them. These children bear tremendous anxiety from a young age as they must continually push aside their own personality in order to please the parent and provide the mirror image the parent so desperately needs.
If these children fail to comply with the narcissist’s wishes or try to set their own goals for their life – God, forbid – the children will be overtly punished, frozen out, or avoided for a period of time – hours, days, or even weeks depending on the perceived transgression in the eyes of the narcissistic parent.
With young children, the narcissistic parent is experienced as unpredictable and confusing. After all, narcissists are awfully difficult to understand for adults, so just imagine how confusing the capricious narcissist is in the eyes of a young child! Because young kids can’t make accurate sense of the narcissist’s interpersonal tricks and stunts, these children internalize intense shame (‘I keep failing my Mom’) which leads to anger that the child turns on himself (‘I’m so stupid,’ ‘Something’s wrong with me’). The overall quality and strength of the bond between the narcissistic parent and young child are poor and weak. Deep down, the child doesn’t feel consistently loved, as the child is taught the metaphoric Narcissistic Parenting Program: You’re only as good as I say you are, and you’ll be loved only if you’re fully compliant with my wishes. Simply put, it’s truly heartbreaking for the child – although the narcissistic parent is sinfully oblivious.
It’s not until many years later that the life experiences of the child of the narcissist start to make a little more sense. Friends often catch glimpses of the kind of "crazy" parenting these individuals received, so he or she starts to get a healthy reality check like this: “Your mom is insane,” or “Your Dad is seriously messed up.”
How Narcissistic Parenting Impacts the Adult Relationships of Children of Narcissists
Because the narcissistic parent-child bond was so distorted and corrupt, the offspring as adults tend to gravitate toward drama-laden, roller-coaster relationships – especially with romantic partners. Because they didn’t grow up with the belief that they were intrinsically okay and good, it makes perfect sense that these individuals would gravitate toward stormy romantic partners later. These adults would feel like a fish out of water in a relationship with someone who loved them consistently, and the experience would be so unfamiliar that it would cause major anxiety.
Accordingly, these individuals tend to seek out partners who are emotionally unavailable, critical, or withholding – just like Mommy and/or Daddy was in the past. In short, the only kind of relationship the adult child of a narcissist really fits in with is one with a highly skewed dynamic: The child of the narcissist must cater to and keep their partner happy, even when that involves squashing her own needs and feelings.
It’s not until the adult children of a narcissist get (a lot of) psychotherapy or have a life-changing experience that pulls them away from the disturbed parent that these adult children can truly begin to heal – and then create better, more normal relationships that offer the give-and-take reciprocity most of us have and value in our relationships.
What’s interesting to note is the narcissistic parent’s reaction to witnessing a healthy psychological change in their child. Once the child or adult child of the narcissist starts to get psychologically healthier and begins to distance himself a bit from the parent, the narcissistic parent experiences a sort of existential panic.
Often, it’s a psychotherapist, colleague, or friend who plants the seeds of change, declaring to the child that the parent is toxic and emotionally abusive. Thrust into fight mode, the narcissistic parent feels furious and works to ostracize the individual suspected of inducing the change and pulling the child away from the parent’s tight grip.
Though it can initially be confusing to the adult child why the narcissistic parent verbally tears apart his closest confidants, the parent’s reaction ultimately shows the adult child what matters most to the narcissistic parent: his or her own emotional needs – not those of the adult child.
Constant [destructive] criticism can have long-term [transgenerational] effects on self-worth and relationships.
KEY POINTS
- Frequent criticism early in life can make it hard to trust yourself.
- Parental treatment can affect not only how you feel about yourself as an adult but the quality of your relationships.
- With consistent practice you can break out of these automatic reactions and develop new habits.
Make a vow not to abandon yourself to your automatic conditioning, and instead guard your mind and heart. Stay close enough to your experience that you [seek to] know who you are, and no self-critical thoughts can disrupt that bedrock understanding.
Authoritarian parenting outcomes: What happens to the kids?
Influencing Wellbeing: Materialism and Self-Esteem
Conquer materialism and improve wellbeing
Proponents of simple living and minimalism believe that placing less value on material possessions leads to increased happiness and wellbeing. Indeed, a number of studies have shown that people who value money and possessions over other aims in life report less happiness and more depression.[1] By contrast, only a few studies have shown how changes in materialism relate to changes in wellbeing.[1] Studies exploring ways to discourage materialistic values are also limited.
Professor Tim Kasser and colleagues have published a paper in the journal Motivation and Emotion that uses four studies to demonstrate that wellbeing declines as people become more materialistic. Becoming less materialistic also predicted improvements in wellbeing. These findings were consistent across different time frames (12 years, 2 years and 6 months), samples (adults and adolescents), contexts (the USA and Iceland) and measures of both materialism and wellbeing.
Truth Vs. Yajuj Majuj's Suicidal LIES! ( Part 7 C) -- Riba ( Usury) & Mental Illness!
As well as demonstrating that changes in materialism can predict changes in wellbeing, the paper also introduced an intervention to discourage materialism in adolescents. This three-session financial education program was designed to reduce spending and promote both sharing and saving. Topics included advertising and consumer culture, tracking spending behavior, and integrating sharing and saving into a financial plan. Of the 71 adolescents (aged 10 to 17 years) involved in the study, those who were randomly assigned to the education group became less materialistic after participating in the intervention. Notably, adolescents who began with high materialistic values when assigned to the intervention group reported increased self-esteem over time, while those assigned to the no-treatment control group reported decreased self-esteem.
Other studies have also found that boosting adolescents’ self-esteem not only discourages materialistic values, but also eliminates age differences in materialism.[2] These age differences reflect the period between middle childhood and early adolescence when adolescents are more likely to experience low self-esteem and pursue materialistic goals.
Boosting our children’s self-esteem isn’t always easy. As Chaplin & John (2007) note, self-esteem can dip as children enter puberty and move into high school, while materialistic tendencies can strengthen as peers take on greater significance and marketers develop more targeted messages.
However, as demonstrated above, these challenges can be overcome. Taking the time to compliment our children and develop their strengths may not only improve their self-esteem, but guide them towards a less materialistic life and greater wellbeing.
Why are we so driven to accumulate possessions and wealth?
In January 1848, James Marshall was building a sawmill by a river near present day Sacramento when he found a piece of glowing metal on the floor, which turned out to be gold. Once rumours of the discovery had spread within a few weeks, tens of thousands of people were flocking to the area, struck by "gold fever."
Ships were abandoned all over the California coast, businesses closed down, and whole towns became deserted. In a little over a year, San Francisco grew from a shanty town of 79 buildings to a city of tens of thousands. Over the next few years, at least 300,000 gold-seekers came to California.
The effect on the Native Americans of California was catastrophic. They were driven off their traditional hunting and gathering grounds, and their rivers were polluted by gravel, silt, and toxic chemicals from the new mines. Some Indian groups used force to try to protect their lands, but were massacred by the miners. Those who weren't killed by the miners slowly starved to death, or died from diseases passed on by the immigrants. Others were kept as slaves, while attractive young women were carried off to be sold. As a result, the Californian Native American population fell from around 150,000 in 1845 to 30,000 in 1870.
This savage materialism was typical of European immigrants' attitude to the "New World" of America. They saw it as a treasure-house of resources to ransack, and saw the native population as an inconvenient obstacle to be eradicated.
Some tribes were so confused by the colonists' insatiable desire for gold that they believed that the metal must be a kind of deity with supernatural powers. Why else would they go to such lengths to get hold of it? When an Indian chief in Cuba learned that Spanish sailors were about to attack his island, he started to pray to a chest full of gold, appealing to the "gold spirit" which he believed they worshipped. But the gold spirit didn't show him any mercy — the sailors invaded the island, captured the chief, and burned him alive.
Modern Materialism
In some ways, the gold diggers' rampant materialism was understandable, since they were living at a time of great poverty, and for many of them gold digging seemed to offer an escape from starvation. But most of us in the western, industrialized world don't have that excuse. Our appetite for wealth and material goods isn't driven by hardship, but by our own inner discontent. We're convinced that we can buy our way to happiness, that wealth is the path to permanent fulfillment and well-being. We still measure success in terms of the quality and price of the material goods we can buy, or in the size of our salaries.
Our mad materialism would be more forgivable if there was evidence that material goods and wealth do lead to happiness. But all the evidence fails to show this. Study after study by psychologists has shown that there is no correlation between wealth and happiness. The only exception is in cases of real poverty, when extra income does relieve suffering and brings security. But once our basic material needs are satisfied, our level of income makes little difference to our level of happiness.
Research has shown, for example, that extremely rich people such as billionaires are not significantly happier than people with an average income, and suffer from higher levels of depression. Researchers in positive psychology have concluded that true well-being does not come from wealth but from other factors such as good relationships, meaningful and challenging jobs or hobbies, and a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves (such as a religion, a political or social cause, or a sense of mission).
Explanations for Materialism
Many economists and politicians believe that acquisitiveness — the impulse to buy and possess things — is natural to human beings. This seems to make sense in terms of Darwin's theory of evolution: Since natural resources are limited, human beings have to compete over them, and try to claim as large a part of them as possible.
One of the problems with this theory is that there is actually nothing "natural" about the desire to accumulate wealth. In fact, this desire would have been disastrous for earlier human beings. For the vast majority of our time on this planet, human beings have lived as hunter-gatherers — small tribes who would usually move to a different site every few months. As we can see from modern hunter-gatherers, this way of life has to be non-materialistic, because people can't afford to be weighed down with unnecessary goods. Since they moved every few months, unnecessary goods would simply be a hindrance to them, making it more difficult for them to move.
Another theory is that the restlessness and constant wanting which fuels our materialism is a kind of evolutionary mechanism which keeps us in a state of alertness. (The psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has suggested this, for example.) Dissatisfaction keeps living beings on the lookout for ways of improving their chances of survival; if they were satisfied they wouldn't be alert, and other creatures would take the advantage.
But there is no evidence that other animals live in a state of restless dissatisfaction. On the contrary, many animals seem to very slow and static lives, content to remain within their niche and to follow their instinctive patterns of behaviour. And if this is what drives our materialism, we would probably expect other animals to be acquisitive too. But again, there is no evidence — apart from some food-hoarding for the winter months — that other animals share our materialistic impulses. If it was necessary for living beings to be restless and constantly wanting then evolution would surely have ground to a halt millions of years ago.
In my view, acquisitiveness is best understood in psychological terms. Our mad materialism is partly a reaction to inner discontent. As human beings, it's normal for us to experience an underlying psychological discord, caused by the incessant chattering of our minds, which creates a disturbance inside us and often triggers negative thoughts. Another source of psychological discord is the strong sense of separateness many of us feel, the sense of being isolated individuals living in a world which is "out there," on the other side of our heads.
We look to external things to try to alleviate our inner discontent. Materialism certainly can give us a kind of happiness — the temporary thrill of buying something new, and the ego-inflating thrill of owning it afterward. And we use this kind of happiness to try to override, or compensate for, the fundamental unhappiness inside us.
In addition, our desire for wealth is a reaction to the sense of lack and vulnerability generated by our sense of separation. This generates a desire to makes ourselves more whole, more significant and powerful. We try to bolster our fragile egos and make ourselves feel more complete by accumulating wealth and possessions.
It doesn't work, of course — or at least, it only works for a very short time. The happiness of buying or owning a new item rarely lasts longer than a couple of days. The sense of ego-inflation generated by wealth or expensive possessions can be more enduring, but it's very fragile too. It depends on comparing yourself to other people who aren't as well off as you, and evaporates if you compare yourself to someone who is wealthier than you. And no matter how much we try to complete or bolster our ego, our inner discontent and incompleteness always re-emerges, generating new desires. No matter how much we get, it's never enough. Desires are inexhaustible. The satisfaction of one desire just creates new desires, like a cell multiplying.
The only real way of alleviating this psychological discord is not by trying to escape it, but by trying to heal it. — which will have to be subject of another blog post.http://www.stevenmtaylor.com
Following the herd may seem prudent to individuals, but it's risky for society.
Psychopath Cowboys; Sociopath Herds: A New Theory of How Evil Happens
If you want a simple but accurate explanation for why civilization so often veers toward evil, here's a theory worth considering: Psychopaths are overrepresented in positions of power and they make sociopaths out of large numbers of us.
Robert Hare, psychology's most famous expert on psychopaths distinguishes psychopaths from sociopaths as follows.
Psychopaths are without conscience and incapable of empathy, guilt, or loyalty to anyone but themselves ... Sociopathy is not a formal psychiatric condition. It refers to patterns of attitudes and behaviors that are considered antisocial and criminal by society at large, but are seen as normal or necessary by the subculture or social environment in which they developed.
After WWII, many people suspected that there might be something about the German temperament that made them so willing to comply with Hitler's orders to hurt fellow humans. In one of psychology's most famous experiments Stanley Milgram demonstrated that most of us, regardless of race, religion, gender or nationality will readily comply with an authority figure's instructions to hurt fellow humans.
In Milgram's experiment a man in a white lab coat instructed subjects to administer what they believed to be successively intense electrical shocks to another person. Coaxed only by such statements as "Please continue," and "The experiment requires that you continue," 65% of subjects inflicted the maximum 450-volt shock and none of the remaining 35% insisted the experiment be terminated or left the room to check the health of the victim without requesting permission to leave.
All right so it's not just the Germans. More generally then, what would make any of us sociopathically deferential to a Hitler-like psychopath? Are we all subconsciously sadistic?
No, we're subconsciously bovine. We become herd animals and follow the leader.
Once we have determined that someone is in a position of moral leadership, we shift from moral autonomy to moral deference.
We don't shirk responsibility so much as surrender it to a higher power and it's understandable that we would. A true moral leader deserves our allegiance and support. Aligning with moral leadership lends our leverage to his or her righteous cause. Think of where we would be today without the allied soldiers' deference to moral leadership in WWII. We survived Hitler because the Greatest Generation sacrificed their moral autonomy to true moral leaders. Theirs was not to wonder why; theirs was just to do or die.
The problem isn't in our deference to moral leaders but in how lousy we are at determining who is a moral leader. Hitler wasn't one and yet masses of people thought that he was.
Our deference explains why psychopaths are over-represented in positions of power. By their nature psychopaths have no conscience and will fight as dirty as they can get away with fighting. This gives them an enormous edge in competition.
Just think how your fortunes would rise in any game if you could cheat and your opponent couldn't. A psychopath's fortunes would rise in game play too but not nearly so much as they rise in politics.
In games the line between fair and unfair play is well defined so it's easy to spot cheaters. In politics the line is fuzzier which makes it harder to spot cheaters, easier to cheat, and easier for the psychopath to defend himself by pleading ignorance and self-defense saying, "I don't think I crossed the line and anyway I think my opponent crossed it so, if I got close to the line it was merely in self defense."
Also, clearly the object in games is to win and therefore deferring like a herd animal to a moral leader would be absurd. You probably haven't done that since you were cowed at seven into teaming up with your big brother to beat your little brother at Monopoly. As an adult you're not suddenly going to assist your opponent in some play-to-win game just because he professes moral authority.
But in the political arena you might well defer. Politics for most of us is not just played to win, but to do what's right. In games winning is everything, in politics most of us think winning is means to a higher end. Because politics isn't just about winning, our guards are down and paradoxically it becomes easier for a psychopath to win. Our deference to moral leadership is the psychopath's secret weapon. In politics, the moral leader says move and we moo.
So how does someone look like a moral leader? One way is through deeds, to live clean (and not vain) and let your works speak.
But that's labor intensive and by no means the most efficient way, especially for a psychopath. Remember his aim is to get away with as much dirty fighting as possible, an aim at odds with demonstrating moral leadership through deeds. There's a much easier way.
Samuel Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." A patriot out-moralizes his opposition. He says "I love my country more than you do." He acts like the ultimate judge of who is the most patriotic and then claims himself the winner.
Patriotism is but one of a great many ways to claim the moral mantel by assuming the role of ultimate moral judge and condemning others. More generally and more to the point, moral condemnation of one's opponents is the first refuge of a psychopath.
To look like a moral leader a psychopath need only follow a simple formula. Project your psychopathy onto your opponent. Simply inventory the list of dirty tricks you would be willing to play on your opponent and accuse your opponent of employing each one. If you lie, call your opponent a liar. If you slander accuse him of slander. If you corrupt public debate accuse him of corrupting public debate. If you don't care about the downtrodden, accuse your opponent of not caring about the downtrodden.
Isn't such hypocrisy easily detected? Not if the hypocrite is first to accuse. Projecting from normal moral sensitivities, he who casts the first stone must have a damned good reason, because it's such an audacious thing to do. The seconded to accuse, we assume needn't have a good reason. A retaliator is just trying to weasel out of the hot seat the first to accuse rightfully put him in.*
"I know you are but what am I" works well enough for kids, but by adulthood the hypocritical deflection is matured to a more sophisticated, "Sir I have kept silent as long as I could but your moral depravity forces me to speak."
Freud called it projection but it needn't be as psychodynamically intricate as he envisioned it. A simple formula does the trick, especially because once the psychopath applies the formula, decent if indiscriminately bovine humans will flock to his aid.
Hitler accused his opposition of conspiring to take over the world. Stalin purged millions of opponents for being self serving and morally corrupt. Joseph McCarthy accused people of undermining our Democracy. I'm confident that every psychopathic leader in modern history has employed the formula.
Milgram's experiment shocked us into the recognition that no one is exempt. It's not just that a few of us might go sociopathically bovine and follow a psychopath masquerading as a moral leader. All of us might.
To this I would add the reverse. It's not just that a few psychopathic leaders masquerade as moral leaders by hypocritically accusing their opponents of their own crimes. All of them do. How then should we live?
More discerningly about moral leadership, taking much more seriously the evidence of hypocrisy in our most strident self-proclaimed moral leaders.
This article was inspired by listening to Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them, Al Franken's highly informative (though also entertaining) detailed analysis of corruption among those who have taken over the Republican Party in the past few decades.
*Karl Rove makes a point of attacking opponents not on their weaknesses but on their strengths, for example when Bush, a draft dodger was at a disadvantage against Kerry, a decorated military hero, Rove attacked Kerry on his military record. For a more detailed analysis see, Karl Rove’s Playbook summarized here:
1. Take the Offensive
2. Attack Your Opponent's Strengths
3. Accuse Your Opponent of What He/She is Going to Accuse You Of
4. Go Negative, Then Cry Foul
5. Tell One Big Lie
6. Appeal to Moral Values
7. Sell on Persona
8. Sell an Adolescent Worldview
9. Exploit the Media
10. Create Straw Issues
11. Employ Surrogates
12 Use Emotional Appeals
13. Rely on Expert Testimonials
14. Use Rhetorical Devices
The [MAGHZUB] Curse of the Herd
[and upon the eternally accursed and its fasaad/ mufsidun/ da-ja-la]
What does it mean to grow up in a society [gone astray] that permits no strays?
I confess I'm biased. I get very irritated by mindless conformity, even about silly, inconsequential things. I find it exasperating, for instance, when people can’t decide for themselves if a song is beautiful or a person attractive.
But perhaps I’m affected more than I know. There’s reason to think that we are designed to conform, that our ancestors evolved a sensitivity to social cues and a tendency to adopt group norms.
Sometimes the majority’s got practical information to share – information that is objectively helpful, like how to catch a fish or prevent infection.
In other cases, group norms are arbitrary, but useful when everyone agrees on them. It doesn’t matter which side of the street we drive on, as long as we all conform to the same rule.
There is also the sort of conformity that exists for purely social reasons. We conform to avoid ostracism or to court social approval. We conform to signal our affiliation with an in-group. To distinguish ourselves from members of an out-group.
I understand why such social conformity is important. If you want to get along in society, it pays to fit in. And nobody wants to rock the boat about stuff that doesn’t matter very much anyway. Presumably, that’s why people conform so blatantly when they participate in certain psychology experiments.
Sample stimulus from Asch experiment
In a famous experimental paradigm created by Solomon Asch, people are asked to judge which among a series of lines are the same length. The task is straightforward, but many people have given answers that were clearly wrong, simply because they believed that the majority endorsed the incorrect answer.
The result has been replicated over and over again, in a variety of cultures. As Daniel Haun and Michael Tomasello have demonstrated, this sort of conformity can be found even among very young children.
What does it mean? In many cases, the conformists are probably biting their tongues. Though they say they agree with the majority, in the privacy of their own minds they know better. But what if people are doing more than paying lip service to a few groupthink mistakes? What if they are actively revising their own, private views, realigning their perceptions and preferences to jibe with popular opinion? And what if they are intolerant of dissent? Ready to punish people for thinking original thoughts?
These aren’t science fiction scenarios. The world is full of examples of arbitrary social pressure and authoritarianism. And as for the idea that people actually change their minds – internalize popular attitudes – that seems pretty obvious too. How else can we explain all those accidents – that the majority in high school thinks the current mode of dress is cool, and that all others are geeky? That the most important determinant of your religious affiliation is cultural geography – the religion adopted by whatever in-group you happened to be born into?
But if you want more evidence, consider this experiment by Jamil Zaki and his colleagues (2011). The researchers asked young men to rate the attractiveness of different female faces, and then told the men that their ratings disagreed with the results of a popular poll. Thirty minutes later, the young men were asked to rate the faces again, and their new responses tended to agree with what they believed to be majority opinion. Moreover, the men who revised their judgments showed increased activity in brain regions linked with the coding of subjective values. It seems these men were truly changing their minds.
Something analogous might happen when people conform about their music preferences (Berns et al 2005), or when they make perceptual judgments about complex, three-dimensional shapes (Berns et al 2010). And other experiments show that adults conform to in-group attitudes about race, aesthetic judgments about geometric shapes, and even answers to logic problems (Sechrist and Young 2011; Stallen et al 2012; Rosenham et al 1963). How deep does this conformity run? How much trouble might it cause?
It’s disturbing, and it should concern everyone. Yes, social conformity serves some helpful functions, and many people believe in the rights of various groups to enforce their own cultural norms. If a community wants to reject science in favor of folk remedies, or to punish people for teaching evolution, isn’t that their prerogative? But unless this group is composed solely of adult volunteers, there is problem. Children don’t volunteer. They don’t choose their birthplace. They don’t choose their parents or the cultural setting in which they grow up.
A child can’t give his informed consent to reject evidence-based medicine or forgo a scientific education. He can’t be said to have free choice in the matter, not until he has attained the age of reason and has been given the opportunity to weigh the evidence and consider alternatives. Even then, a child’s decision will have been made under duress if he believes that opting out of the social norms will lose him the love or support of others. We can’t even say that his parents have given their informed consent. Not if they’ve grown up in a society where people are strongly discouraged from questioning and challenging the status quo. Recognizing a group’s right to self-determination sounds good. But it’s not straightforward. Not if we also recognize the rights of the individual and the peculiar, thorny problem of children’s rights.
Many people grant that it’s wrong to underfeed a child, or to deny him water. It’s wrong to take him away from the family he loves, or conscript him as a prostitute, soldier, or sweatshop worker. Such acts cause pain and damage. They prevent him from pursuing happiness and achieving a sense of well-being. In other words, they infringe on his human rights.
Is freedom of thought a human right? Do kids have a right to learn about the tools of critical thinking? Our need to question and tinker may be as primitive as our need for food and love. As Jaak Panksepp notes (1998), exploration is intrinsically compelling, so much so that if you give a rat the ability to self-stimulate the brain circuits associated with exploration, he will do so compulsively. The act of seeking –of attempting to discover and understand – seems to be like a basic drive. For people strongly motivated to understand, it’s the only route to a certain kind of pleasure, a pleasure experienced by children and scientists alike. When people suffer from brain disorders that disrupt that drive, life may lose its meaning.
So I believe children have a right to ask questions and think for themselves. And I believe that kids should be taught principles of logic and rational inquiry. Our urge to explore and question will inevitably lead to errors and conflicts between partisans. How are we to identify the mistakes? Decide which policies to adopt? Important as it is, the mere act of seeking isn’t guaranteed to lead to enlightenment. It may also lead to delusions, including harmful delusions. By teaching critical thinking, we help people distinguish between better and worse solutions. We help people battle social pressure, the pressure to accept an idea because it is popular, traditional, or the pet of a charismatic advocate.
And that doesn’t just benefit the individual. It benefits us all when people are free to think for themselves and test their ideas against the evidence and principles of logic. Chances are you owe something – your life, your education, your standard of living, the state of your health – to the innovative thinking of other people.
Maybe this seems like a no-brainer. I hope it does. But I am struck by how many people seem content to impose unreflective, conformist thinking on children – if not on their own children, then on other people’s children. It’s very easy to say “live and let live.” The motto might even mean something when we are talking about fully competent adults. But making it into a consistent, coherent moral principle requires a lot of work. We need to acknowledge the pressure to conform – the curse of the herd – and what it means to grow up in a society that permits no strays.
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More reading
For more discussion of critical thinking, see my posts, “Can we raise a new generation of critical thinkers?” and "Peer pressure in preschool: What kids will do to conform," as well as these Parenting Science articles on the subject.
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